


Feeling Broken, No Time to Tell

by Miss_M



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Banter, Canon Continuation, Developing Relationship, F/M, First Time, Masturbation, Psychological Trauma, Rare Pairings, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-01 03:43:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6499438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chilton licks his lips. “This is a mistake.”</p><p>“We all make mistakes,” Freddie says. What happened to Chilton with Freddie’s collusion is one of hers. She is not ashamed to claim him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Overture

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SegaBarrett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/gifts).



> The divergence is that I downplayed Chilton’s end-of-S3 injuries a little (a lot). Title is from Chicane’s “What Am I Doing Here, Part 2.” I own nothing.

Freddie has no use for pity and precious little for sympathy. After the consequences of her article about the Tooth Fairy ( _she still thinks that’s the better name – it certainly sells more T-shirts_ ) play out, after Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter disappear off the face of the earth, leaving several people dead or near as in their _folie à deux_ wake, Freddie casts about for her next logical step. She is not prone to hesitation or being at a loss for an angle. 

Guilt is even more alien to her than pity. Lacking better options, she seeks out Frederick Chilton.

There is a neatness to the choice, though Freddie has yet to figure out what exactly she wants with Chilton when she drives up to the discreet, bucolic plastic-surgery clinic. She and Chilton are, after all, the only verified survivors, other than Alana Bloom and Margot Verger – who refused to respond when Freddie contacted them, as safe as enormous amounts of money can make them – and, of course, Jack Crawford. _He_ won’t ever find Lecter and Graham, he’s too much of a straight arrow still, despite conspiring to kill one man, have another killed, and risk the likely killing of yet a third. Last Freddie’s heard, Crawford has gone back to Europe, as though he cannot fathom that his quarry would not return to old lairs, but seek out new pastures in which to roam and hunt.

Freddie briefly considers giving the nurse at the front desk a false name or attempting a bribe, but then she passes one of her calling cards over the counter, feeling reckless. She figures Chilton must be bored stiff, endless days grown nebulous with nothing but surgery, and therapy, and waiting for his new skin to grow together and start to feel natural. 

She indulges a private, triumphant smile when an attendant returns to tell her that Dr. Chilton has agreed to see her in the conservatory. 

He does not rise from his leather armchair, watches her approach with what he must think is a warning in his blue eyes, but it looks more like wariness. Twice bitten – or is that once vivisected, twice burned? The check of his suit clashes subtly with his tie and the matching handkerchief in his breast pocket. The desperate vanity of a man pretending his dignity remains inviolate, given away by the tell-tale, shiny, tender look of newly grafted skin on his face and hands. Not everyone can pull off clashing patterns with Freddie’s panache.

“Apologies for not bringing grapes or flowers,” Freddie offers in lieu of a greeting. “You must get everything you need in such a fancy facility.”

Chilton still does not speak, watches her while his hand clenches and unclenches on his knee. His silver-tipped cane is within easy reach, leaning against a mahogany side table. Does he merely want something to occupy his hands or would he strike Freddie with the cane, were he not so curious, almost in spite of himself?

“You look much better than I anticipated,” Freddie says, is rewarded by a brief look of fury mingling with satisfaction in Chilton’s eyes. “Modern medicine is truly marvelous.”

“Why are you here, Miss Lounds?” His voice is different, rougher, like a heavy smoker’s. Not all traces of being burned alive can be grafted over with other men’s skin. 

The sound of Chilton’s voice jars Freddie into sincerity.

“I'm here because I knew. I could see what Will Graham was doing, making you his bait, and I let it happen.” Chilton must have known too, on some level: he is no genius, but he is not stupid either. 

Chilton’s hand shoots up, straight as a flame, his flat palm a tiny, breakable shield between them. “You will do me the courtesy of not mentioning his name or that of his partner in crime in my presence. Hearing their names might cause me to have a seizure, which would inconvenience you, Miss Lounds.”

Freddie acknowledges the attempt at wit with a tiny smile. Chilton has not offered her a seat. She takes one anyway, so she can fold her hands on her knee, lest she start fiddling with her own fingers, like he has been doing.

“I…” Freddie does not have to fake hesitancy, for once. She bridles at it, her momentary lack of sure-footedness chafing her. “I am not good with guilt.”

“Am I supposed to be touched by this display of vulnerability?” Chilton demands, his old, haughty self coming through loud and clear. It helps Freddie focus.

“Maybe,” she shoots back. “You’re not the only one who’s been rattled by all this.”

She could even say ‘traumatized,’ but she will not give Chilton the satisfaction. He has already got more out of Freddie than most people ever do. 

There was that cop ( _what was his name…?_ ) Eldon Stammets shot right in front of Freddie, Dr. Carruthers with his Colombian necktie, Chilton himself, opened like an anatomy book, hugging a gift basket of his own entrails. She sees the memory come and go behind Chilton’s eyes, sees him consider and refuse to allow the possibility that Freddie might have her own scars.

“Miss Lounds.” His tone is one she remembers, patronizing and nearly self-assured. He has got past his initial discomfort at her visit, but he was never quite comfortable in his skin to start with. Even when it was _his_ skin. “The only kind of emotional transparency of which you are capable is goal-oriented and ultimately selfish. I fail to see how I can be of use to you.”

 _Such projection from a doctor of psychiatry_ , Freddie thinks, pleased with herself for not losing her touch. Pleased with Chilton for remaining as predictable as ever: willing to be flattered, seduced, so long as he needn’t work for it. 

She holds up her hand in its red kid glove, counts off on her fingers. “The psychopath triumvirate: charm, focus, ruthlessness. Between the two of us, we have all three. We will need all three to catch them.”

“Catch whom?”

“Oh,” Freddie croons, stretching the syllable like bubble gum, “come on. You want me to say it, after you warned me not to say it? Is that the kind of game which stokes your fire, Dr. Chilton?” 

She leans in, mouths the names like she’s lipping an ice cream, watches Chilton’s irises expand. He is gripping the head of his cane tightly in his fist. Freddie is amused by the ease and speed of his arousal, not that she doesn’t share it, she can feel herself expanding and moistening at the thought of running this particular quarry to ground. 

They both failed in the pursuit once before, and humanity evolved from hunter-gatherers, though not by much. Chilton is in the awkward, liminal position of being both prey and survivor twice over, a victim of his vanity at least as much as a plaything of Hannibal Lecter and Lecter’s little husband. He must want to catch them more badly than he can articulate.

Now for the final touch: make him feel special, imply there’s competition to be vanquished.

“Jack Crawford is looking for them too, but he won’t find them. He cannot quite accept that he ever made a mistake about either of them. I can accept it. You have had to. _We_ can find them. We are the only ones.”

“That’s quite the rousing speech, Miss Lounds.” This particular roughness in Chilton’s voice owes nothing to his injuries, Freddie is pleased to note.

Freddie acknowledges the deliberate Freudian slip with a smile. “It would make quite the comeback story for us both. Unless, of course, you’d rather sit here, stewing in self-pity or, as your therapist no doubt calls it, taking the time to heal.”

“And when we have found them and miraculously contrived to remain alive: what then?” Chilton demands. 

Nearly there, reeled in. “We can discuss that when the topic becomes pertinent. I don’t think martyrdom would be a good look on me, nor is it my goal. There could be a lot of money in it or glory… or revenge. Maybe even all three. Wouldn’t that be nice?” 

Chilton still hasn’t said yes. His eyes glitter as he struggles to maintain his poker face. Freddie sits back in her chair, crosses her legs. She smiles at Chilton, feeling more centered than she has done since before Lecter and Graham’s disappearance.


	2. Interlude

It doesn’t take Freddie long to decide that Chilton is garden-variety narcissistic as overcompensation for his insecurities, rather than truly psychopathic. Freddie has a good eye, and she is willing to concede that so does Chilton: he spotted a flaw in Hannibal Lecter’s studied mask before anyone else did. Maybe because – unlike with Abel Gideon – Chilton wasn’t trying so hard to find the answer he anticipated was there with Lecter. Chilton’s vanity was both goaded and flattered by Lecter’s attentions. He still tries too hard to leave an impression, present himself as a man of the world, master of his destiny, always aware of how the odds shift and tumble from moment to moment. Freddie is relieved, for Chilton’s sake and her own convenience while spending time with him, that he is not partial to gambling. 

Come to think of it, other than a tendency to peacock, which Freddie can understand and allow since she shares it, Chilton doesn’t seem to have any strong vices. Talking about Lecter and Will Graham is his biggest indulgence. Once he got past his affected distaste for uttering and hearing their names, he can barely shut up about them, and always in the present tense. He can no more accept the possibility that they simply drowned than Freddie can – that’s no way for a good story to end. 

Chilton gives Freddie grief for coining the term ‘murder husbands.’ Serenely she informs him she copyrighted it. That shuts Chilton up, the small victory bringing Freddie great delight. 

They sit in their hotel lounge over drinks, after another day spent chasing their tails in an effort to get access to DOJ and FBI files on Lecter and Graham. Two empty salad plates sit next to their wine glasses. Another thing they have in common is vegetarianism, though Freddie’s is a matter of free will, while Chilton’s is the child of necessity. 

_Nothing like grief and trauma to pull people together_ , Freddie thinks wryly while Chilton drones on.

“Hannibal creates the illusion of a shared conspiracy, a collusion,” he says. “It’s intimate, seductive. He demonstrates his superiority by pointing out he knows something about one, one's actions, and then he condones one's behavior. He makes one feel validated and accepted, and thus becomes a friend and ally against a world lacking in such delicate understanding.”

Despite having heard variations on this theme many times, Freddie finds herself strangely riveted. A few glasses of wine have birthed more unflattering honesty than Freddie believed Chilton capable of. 

“Is that how he got to you?” she asks, never one to pass up an opportunity to prod. “Seduction?”

Chilton gives her a look. “Hannibal never got to me.” 

_Well, that didn’t last long._ Freddie doubts Chilton is aware he always calls Lecter by his first name, like he is discussing a long-lost friend, more mourned than despised. The one that got away.

“He blinded me, a reflection from a passing car in the desert,” Chilton insists. “But I could still see him.”

Freddie sips her wine, lets a strategic five seconds tick past. “You didn’t start militating against him till after our close encounter with Abel Gideon.” She is proud of how steady her hand holding the wineglass is when she thinks of Gideon. “Mutilation must bring great clarity.”

“Not really. Pain skews perspective. During the… event, there were moments I was certain you were an angel.”

Honesty again, and more than Chilton intended, judging by his expression. 

Freddie smiles. “An angel of death? Or of mercy?”

He smiles back, one eyebrow quirked. “That is the question.”

Freddie is not sure who is winning this conversation, and she doesn’t like not being sure. So she comes out with the one thing she has been absolutely itching to ask Chilton.

“What was he like, the Tooth Fairy? You and a blind woman who vanished into the ether are the only ones who came close enough to touch him and survive.”

Chilton is staring at her, and now Freddie is certain she is winning. 

“Freddie,” he says calmly. 

“Yes?” 

“Go fuck yourself.”

With barely a lurch, he is up and moving away, leaning heavily on his cane. He does not look back while waiting for the elevator or in the seconds before the sliding doors hide him from Freddie.

Freddie shrugs it off, orders another glass of wine. The nearly empty lounge soon begins to bore her, leaving her with little choice but to consider the undeniable fact that Frederick Chilton getting pissed off with her is quite the turn-on.

She considers his suggestion, decides it is sound: Freddie does not feel like dealing with more of Chilton’s drama tonight, so she goes back to her own room, alone, and masturbates to her heart’s content. 

Laid out naked on the bed, she wonders, as she works her clit with her forefinger, what else Chilton might have said or done if he’d stayed and given Freddie a chance to respond, to goad him further. Or if she’d shown up at his door, just down the thick-carpeted hallway? Might he have slapped her? Thrown her on the floor? Grabbed her hair and hit her backside with the flat of his hand? She’s noticed his hands, surprisingly strong for someone so sedentary. 

Freddie groans, enjoying the possibility she might be overheard through thin hotel walls, bends her knees and lifts her legs while she rubs her clit and urgently sucks two fingers of her left hand, coats them in saliva, the better to start banging herself with while she indulges this most unexpected yet, yes, logical fantasy: she has got used to having Chilton around, and who else is there for her to spar with at the moment?


	3. Fugue

Freddie has noticed Chilton looking at her when he thinks she won’t notice. It’s no more than her just due for all the effort she puts into how she presents herself to the world, but he will not make the first move. If they’d met in this hotel bar during a conference, he would, but they already have a connection, and so he cannot. That’s all right. Freddie likes control, and she does not waste time denying the obvious. _Sometimes blunt instruments are the most effective_ , she thinks as she downs her last mouthful of scotch and melted ice, leans across the tiny, round table, good only for enforcing intimacy, and kisses him before he can ask if she wants another drink.

When they part, Chilton’s eyes have gone honest-to-goodness unfocused. Freddie finds that sweet.

He licks his lips. “This is a mistake.” 

Whether he thinks he’s playing hard to get or being the responsible adult, Freddie refrains from laughing in his face. She can be kind when she chooses. 

“We all make mistakes,” she says. What happened to Chilton with Freddie’s collusion is one of hers. She is not ashamed to claim him.

The shadows were thick in the observatory where Gideon held them captive. Shadows cluster strategically in this bar, for much the same reason – to help games and charades play out to their logical conclusion. Chilton does not push her away, nor does he lurch up with his cane and leave her alone again. 

Freddie leads the way to her room, identical to his and every other room in this hotel, yet her territory nonetheless. This is her fantasy. She’s got him laid out on the bed, and she is crouching over him, yet he still has not touched her. 

“Chilton, I have already seen your insides. Believe me, your scars will be refreshing.”

His laugh comes out almost soundless, almost a choke. “Might you find it within you to call me by my name at a time like this?”

Hands planted on either side of his head, Freddie leans in close enough to see the pale surgical scars on his lower face, like faded border markers seen from an airplane. “Frederick,” she says.

She listens to him inhale, exhale, the rustle of pants and sheets as he shifts under her. So: his own name is an aphrodisiac. Freddie smiles. “Are you in pain right now?”

He stills under her again, his eyes hooded with arousal or suspicion.

“I’m always in pain, Miss Lounds.”

He thinks he can play the name game with her. Freddie hovers closer, her lips nearly touching his. He is hers already. 

“But you can manage to unbutton your pants, yes?” she teases.

“I… should be able to manage that much, yes.”

He is a vain man, it cannot be doing him any good, being like this. Freddie takes pity, an unusual impulse for her.

“Do that, then, leave the rest to me.” 

She kisses him at last, discovers that his lips feel warm and wholly natural. His tongue is definitely his own, Freddie can feel the scar tissue along one side, she doubts medical science can replicate the texture and moisture just yet. The muscularity too – he may be better at cunnilingus than most selfish men, given his craving for approval and praise. Freddie is happy to anticipate finding out whether she is right about that. 

“Am I to be your dildo, then?” Chilton prods in between kisses. “I am truly reduced in the world.”

Freddie might reply _You are restored_ , but she will not insult him with facile encouragement. She prefers bluntness, a surprisingly effective seduction technique.

“I figured we’d start with the easy stuff. You are welcome to take as active a role as you” _can manage_ “wish. Or you may lie back and let me do all the hard work.”

He’s relaxed enough to laugh out loud. “Punning is the lowest form of wit, Fredricka.”

“It’s Freddie, in and out of bed, Frederick, and you can talk and unbutton at the same time.”

Freddie sits back on his thighs, holds his eyes as she shrugs out of her purple jacket, pulls her top off over her head, undoes her bra. He manages more than just to unbutton, his prick hard in his hand as he watches her watch him while she strips, first herself, then him. He talks while she does this, unbuttons his shirt and runs her hand along the long scar on his abdomen, up and over his ribs, to his throat, his nervous chatter like a forest stream. 

Freddie presses lightly on Chilton’s ( _Frederick’s_ ) Adam’s apple, till he breaks off talking and swallows, his face halfway to terrified. Before he can decide Freddie intends to complete his near brushes with death, she smiles, lifts her fingers from his throat. She gave him oxygen when he was vivisected, after all, this is not her kind of cruelty. 

She resumes kissing him, one hand propping her up on the pillow while she combs his thick hair ( _transplanted?_ ) with the other, her bare chest brushing his. She circles the bullet scar on his cheek with the tip of her tongue, making him moan like she’s sucking him off. His hands have remembered the etiquette in these situations and are busily grabbing Freddie everywhere within reach. Her hand leaves his hair to trace his navel, his other hair, the length of him. He won’t need any help from Freddie to get ready, which is just as well because she saves her patience for work, not sex, and she’s already wet enough to ride him without lube.

Freddie decides to wait a bit before she asks him to remove the metal plate from his cheek, the blue lens from his eye. Freakishness has its charms, and Freddie is blessed with very few prejudices. She is confident she can get _Frederick_ to stop dwelling on his injuries long enough that he’ll reduce himself willingly to what remains of his organic body, and then fuck her across her desk one day sooner rather than later, pressing her face to the polished surface like she’ll show him. He could use the ego boost, and Freddie knows how to savor letting a man think he gave her something special when he pressed up between her legs, parted wide and too impatient to stroke his ego when all she wants is a good, hard fuck.

She didn’t use to think Frederick Chilton and hard fucking belonged in the same sentence, even before his manifold injuries. Freddie arches her back, throws back her head, her long curls tickling her spine as she puts on a little show, yet she isn’t really acting. She’s enjoying herself, knows Chilton isn’t about to use this against her.

*

Some weeks later, Freddie receives vague reports of two men sighted in Argentina, men who may or may not be them. Freddie is only mildly surprised at herself for letting Chilton decide what to do about it, surrendering control to his whim. _I didn’t intend to make fucking a cripple more than a weekend indulgence_ , she thinks sourly, yet she holds her tongue while Chilton thinks, stroking the scar on his cheek with his fingertip. A tic he hasn’t yet noticed in himself. 

“No,” he says at last. 

“No?” 

“No. They deserve each other, and may they stew in it.”

Freddie cracks a grin at his choice of words, finds that she is only a little disappointed. In the end, neither of them is burdened with the glory-seeking death wish of a Crawford or a Graham. 

“I didn’t feel like sitting on a plane to Buenos Aires for 14 hours anyway,” Freddie deadpans as she gets up to fetch them both a drink. The occasion seems right for scotch on the rocks at ten in the morning: a libation, a celebration.

She pauses behind Frederick’s chair. He is so still, he’s practically vibrating with anticipation of what she will do: she is standing in his blind spot, where mostly monsters lurk.

Freddie brings her palm down to the top of his head, so his hair barely brushes it. She wonders if he can feel her body heat with his patched-up scalp. 

“Freddie…”

“Be quiet, Frederick. Don’t spoil it.”

He exhales loudly, says nothing further. 

Freddie smiles, since he can’t see her. Life is just full of surprises, not all of them awful or disappointing.


End file.
